ericmurphy

It's hard not to ridicule the idea of continents racing around at hundreds of miles an hour, even when you're deliberately trying not to make it sound ridiculous.

Steviepinhead

If, upon re-reading my last several comments, you feel you find an example of a person--as opposed to an idea--being ridiculed, or of an idea/argument only being ridiculed, without substantive counterarguments or examples, then that goes beyond my conscious intent, and you certainly have my permission--

--not, I realize, that you need it--

--to do any editing you see fit.

And, as to Zippy, though I can't say we see a lot of each other in recent years, yes, he's one of the smarter members of the immediate Pinhead clade.

Calilasseia

So we're still left with the Ancient Egyptians somehow maintaining social continuity despite being under 9,000 metres of water for, what, six months or so?

For those unfamiliar with the business of exploring the abyssal depths of the oceans, there are some salient facts to take into account when considering any global flood scenario. First, there is the matter of pressure. It transpires that there is a nice, handy relationship known to scuba divers the world over, namely that the increase in pressure with increasing depth is a nice linear relationship, and the pressure increases by 1 bar for every 10 metres of depth descended. So, at the bottom of a 9,000 metre deep layer of water, your ambient pressure equals the atmospheric pressure at sea level plus the pressure due to all that seawater, which is 900+1 = 901 bar. Taking atmospheric pressure of 1 bar to be equal to 14.7 lb in^-2, 901 bar equals a pressure of 13244.7 lb in^-2, which is 5.91 tons per square inch.

Now, designing a submersible craft to keep even just one or two people alive taxes the brains of good quality engineers, materials scientists, etc., and the resulting artefact is usually composed of some fairly exotic alloys and composite materials, assembled using similarly exotic engineering techniques, and the retail price of a two-man deep submersible, should anyone here feel like purchasing one, will require a pretty substantial income - if your deep submersible is designed to operate down to 9,000 metres, you would probably be looking at a £20 million price tag. Moreover, this hugely expensive piece of kit will probably allow for a total of just two hours operation at that depth. It will have to spend a minimum of five hours simply descending to that depth, and another five hours rising to the surface. The interior will be cramped, devoid of all but the most basic of creature comforts, and require months of specialist training to operate. During that 12 hours, beginning from launch, through descent to 9,000 metres, through the 2 hours of operation at that depth, through the ascent and reaching the surface, the two man crew will have to endure some fairly unpleasant conditions, not least because the chances are that certain necessary biological functions will become pressingly urgent during that time, and the ability to dispose of the unwanted material outside the submersible during actual deep operations is zero. For numerous sound engineering reasons, the makers of deep submersibles tend to want to have as few holes in the hull as absolutely necessary, as the fewer holes there are, the fewer fatigue points exist whereby the stresses of pressure changes could weaken the hull, and believe me, you do NOT want metal fatigue deciding to let rip on a submersible hull when you are nine kilometres below the water surface. This is NOT a situation in which you can dial the submersible version of the AA or the RAC to tow you out of trouble - if the hull suffers from a serious fatigue crack, it's implosion time and a nasty death for those inside ensues.

So, given that the survivability of human beings at 9,000 metres depth without sophisticated technological assistance is precisely zero, we are still left asking ourselves (and waiting for Dave to answer) how it came to pass that the Ancient Egyptians, who as far as I'm aware did not have access to the technology to build deep submersibles, managed to continue maintaining their social system without any trace of a sign of interruption other than the usual fluctuations of social development, during a time period when, according to Dave, they were under 9,000 metres of water.

Furthermore, we are required to ask the same question of other contemporaneously extant civilisations, whose archaeological remains again show no sign of [1] having spent time trying to maintain social cohesion under 9,000 metres of water, or [2] having suddenly acquired a large fleet of deep submersibles to enable them to do this.

So, even if Dave does not answer any of the other questions that are pertinent with respect to his beloved flood, this one, as it is apposite to pyramids and the builders thereof, deserves addressing.

So tell us Dave, how did the Ancient Egyptians (and numerous other peoples) manage to maintain unbroken social continuity during a period when, according to you, they were under 9,000 metres of water?

Constant Mews

As I recall, Dave has no need for submersible Egyptians: he simply ignores the entire pre-dynastic period of Egypt, and the Stone- and Bronze-Age artifacts of China. He has not yet presented any particular reason to discard the entire body of historical and archaeological science dealing with these two cultures - except for personal incredulity - but I'm sure we can convince him to present us with clear empirical evidence why all the artifacts from Egypt and China should be thrown into the rubbish heap. For example - how does Dave deal withfrom Wikipedia - Pre-dynastic Egypt

JonF

FYI, this board has a Wikipedia tag: yeilds Pre-dynastic_Egypt.

Constant Mews

Quite entertaining. Thank you.

Withered

Okay.

A person that insists on believing that there was no China or Egypt before circa 2700 BCE is beyond my patience.

Good luck with the remainder of your stay here.

Thank you for your responses.
Carry on.

mung bean

I did see it. I found it somewhat less than convincing.

For those who are interested I believe this is the post Dave is referring to:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/...=226323#226323

Calilasseia

Au contraire, the vast majority of the world's archaeologists disagree with you. Taking China for a moment, there are numerous documented Neolithic cultures that did exist and left in their wake numerous artefacts that have been precisely dated. The Liangzhu culture straddles the period from 3400 BC to 2250 BC, and shows no signs of having been erased from the face of the Earth at the time of your supposed flood. It produced finely worked jade and silk artefacts with a high craftsmanship value. The Longshan culture straddles the period 3000 BC to 2000 BC, and produced some of the most exquisite examples of prehistoric ceramics to be found anywhere in the world, having alighted upon a technique for producing eggshell-thin pottery. Neither of these two Neolithic Chinese cultures (and there are quite a few Neolithic cultures that have been discovered to have existed in China, because it's a large land mass with room for several groups of people to have coexisted) have been documented as having come abruptly to a halt at the date of your supposed flood.

Returning to Egypt, Ancient Egyptian civilisation stretches back to 3150 BC and the unification of the Nile Valley Polities. Indeed, archaeological excavations have discovered traces of agrarian civilisation going all the way back to 9500 BC, which is a good three or four thousand years before you claim the universe was created.

Simply making a blind assertion that these cultures did not exist is flatly contradicted by archaeological evidence.

Tell you what Dave, why don't you forward your theories to some of the relevant experts in assorted museums around the world (Smithsonian, British Museum etc) and see what they say in reply? It would be very interesting indeed to find out their reaction to your assertion that these cultures and civilisations "did not exist until after the date of the Tower of Babel".

Dean Anderson

Something I should point out here...

afdave has repeatedly used David Rohl and his "New Chronology" as a reference in support of an Egypt that only flourished after his flood, because this New Chronology pushes the dates of most of the Egyptian dynasties forward enough to leave a "suitable" gap between afdave's flood date and the building of the pyramids.

However, he is only taking isolated dates from Rohl's chronology out of context.

Rohl's chronology (if correct, and that is an extremely big "if") explicitly places the founding of the first dynasties of Egypt in 2781 BCE - 31 years before afdave's flood date - and leaves no room for the civilisation being interrupted by the flood during its early stages and spending hundreds of years rebuilding its population.

afdave has neglected to mention this problem, though, and has left us with the impression that by using Rohl's alternate chronology Egyptian civilisation fits nicely with his flood date.

But it doesn't. Rohl's alternate chonology does not rescue afdave at all. Using it, Egyptian culture still fails to be interrupted by the flood - it merely fails to be interrupted in a slightly different place.

It very much looks as though afdave is simply taking the isolated bits of Rohl's chronology that he can use to support his theory, and is ignoring that these bits are part of a whole that contradicts his theory.